Sunday, October 29, 2017

OSW: Flight from Dream Station Six

Though I seldom post about it here, my homebrew, all-wizard RPG, "Olde School Wizardry" is coming up on session #115 this week.I've found very few things more satisfying than managing a roleplaying campaign that has its own legs and momentum.

Following a few sessions spent with Chris Kutalik's amazing Misty Isles of the Eld by Hydra Cooperative, which integrated with disturbing ease into our existing campaign (basically all I did was move it to the moon), I sent my players the following teaser:Luminous, lunar mist lends a persistent, chalky haze to the surface of the moon, but about every 700 hours the mists "fall," leaving the lunar surface clothed in frigid, naked darkness.

Since the moonquake marking the release of Luna, the moon's captive elemental spirit, from the cruel clutches of Zifthhpf the Usurper, most sources of shelter near Monument Five, her stark, floating prison, have collapsed.

Now as the icy shadows of lunar mistfall grip the moon's surface, the wizards must flee, or the moon will become their icy tomb!Fortunately the wizards have found temporary shelter from the lethal cold within the tubeways and towers of Dream Station Six--a facility for broadcasting frustrating nocturnal signals to the surface of the world below (inspired by Paul Gorman's Faery Ring to Alpha Ari).

The Black Obelisk, a means for jumping between worlds, rests but a stone's throw from the Dream Station, and the wizards have deduced they can harness their own Quintessence to temporarily reactivate the elfin portal generator. However, the psychosyllabic glyphs scribed upon the stone are both subtle and complex. Programming the Obelisk properly is a tricky proposition and a miscalculation could strand explorers anywhere.

Station transmission logs, listing psychic "addresses," might help a great deal, but the wizards had better act quickly. An accident has allowed a nightmare to become corporeal, and it stalks the shadows of the station, able to frighten its victims to death!